1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc, and more particularly, to an information storage medium, a recording and/or reproducing apparatus, and a recording and/or reproducing method by which a disc can be re-initialized so that recording and/or reproducing compatibility can be guaranteed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to the recent developments of optical disc technologies and semiconductor technologies, new functions are frequently added after a standard for an optical system, including an optical drive system and an optical disc, is established. In this case, the standard should be continuously updated.
FIG. 1 is a reference diagram for explaining a problem according to the conventional technology. Referring to FIG. 1, assuming that a conventional standard is referred to as an ‘old’ standard and a standard updated by adding a new function is referred to as a ‘new’ standard, an old standard disc 12 is made to operate in an old standard drive system 11 and a new standard disc 14 is made to operate in a new standard drive system 13.
Due to the added function, the old standard and the new standard may or may not be compatible for recording and/or reproducing data. The recording and/or reproducing compatibility of the two standards indicates that the old standard disc 12 used in the old standard drive system 11 can also be used in the new standard drive system 13 for data recording and/or reproducing. Also, it indicates that the new standard disc 14 used in the new standard drive system 13 can also be used in the old standard drive system 11 for data recording and/or reproducing.
In order to guarantee mutual recording and/or reproducing compatibility between the two standards, when the new standard disc 14 to which the new functions is applied is loaded on the old standard drive system 11, the old standard drive system 11 needs to provide an appropriate treatment for the new function. For this, when the old standard is set up, an appropriate treatment for future addition of a new function should be prepared.
In addition, this appropriate treatment should be a generalized one that can be applied to the new standard, because it should be able to be applied even when the new standard is updated to a newer standard by adding another new function.
Accordingly, in order for a series of different standards according to this periodic addition of new functions to be mutually compatible for recording and/or reproducing data, preparation for the addition of new functions should be performed from the beginning when the standard is set up. For this, a rule by which a drive system should operate for a function that is known to a current standard, and a rule by which the current drive system should operate for a function to be added in the future and which is not known to the current standard need to be prepared. That is, when a future standard is set by adding a new function to a current standard, if a drive system for the future standard stores an operation that should be performed for the new function by a drive system for the current standard, even when a future disc having the new function added to the current standard is loaded on a current standard drive system, according to the stored information, the current standard drive system can read the information stored on the disc and perform the operation for the new function. In other words, the future standard drive system can inform the current drive system how to operate the disc to which the new function is applied, even though the current standard drive system does not know the new function added to the future standard.
When a disc is re-initialized in order to initialize the disc after using it for a while, a method is required by which the disc can be re-initialized such that various types of drive systems can use the disc though there are unrecognizable functions applied to the disc.